Pacific Crucible

For a broader perspective on the war in the Pacific, you cannot do better than Ian Toll's trilogy, beginning with Pacific Crucible (2012), then The Conquering Tide (2015), and finally Twilight Of The Gods (2020). If I had to pick one of these, I would choose the last one, where Toll really hits his full stride as a historian and storyteller. 

I enjoy a good war story. However, telling the story of the Pacific War seemed daunting to me because of its vastness.

I found Ian Toll, in this first of his trilogy, enlivens the Battle of Midway, Coral Sea, Saipan, Leyte Gulf, Tarawa, and the others with electric excitement and clarity. I knew that Japan's two-generation rise from feudal and pre-industrial origins to the status of a major economic and military power was more than remarkable it was unprecedented in the entire course of human history.

Japanese hubris led to the attack on Pearl Harbor battling the “sleeping giant” of… show more.

The first year of WWII is what I think modern combat with a peer competitor would look like.

The whole series is fantastic, but what fascinated me about this book was the details on the first three months of the war, where Japan is victorious everywhere. American pilots and commanders had to learn the basics of modern naval combat.

We have grown accustomed to air superiority, and losing one or two aircraft is front-page headlines. The American carriers in WWII lost aircraft, squadrons at a time, and though they recovered many more pilots than the Japanese did, they still saw… show more.